A House chairman is threatening to subpoena the Department of Veterans Affairs if it doesn't provide his committee with more information about allegations of sexual harassment within a VA office in charge of preventing harassment and discrimination.
In a letter Friday afternoon, House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Mike Bost, R-Ill., accused the VA of so far providing few substantive documents for his investigation into whistleblower allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct at the VA's Office of Resolution Management, Diversity and Inclusion.
If the department does not provide more documents by Wednesday morning, Bost said his committee will discuss issuing a subpoena at a business meeting scheduled for the following day.
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"Your team is either negligently, or purposefully, failing to provide the committee with the requested documents," Bost wrote in the letter to VA Secretary Denis McDonough. "This is unacceptable."
A VA spokesperson did not immediately respond to Military.com's request for comment Friday afternoon.
Last year, the committee received two whistleblower complaints through its online whistleblower portal, alleging managers in the Office of Resolution Management, Diversity and Inclusion committed sexual harassment.
One of the whistleblowers said they received numerous sexually suggestive and aggressive text messages from their senior manager, according to the committee. The whistleblower also alleged that when they turned down the manager's advances, the manager started bad-mouthing them to other office leaders, according to the committee.
After Bost made the allegations public in November, the VA said it was reassigning some leaders in the office and would launch its own investigation. The VA's assistant secretary for human resources, Gina Grosso, also announced she was resigning, a move Bost linked to his investigation.
Since receiving the first allegation in September, Bost has sent several letters to the VA, requesting documents for his investigation into the whistleblower complaints. While he has received 175 documents, just 32 of those are related directly to the whistleblower allegations, he said in his Friday letter.
Of the 32 pages directly related to the allegations, the "vast majority" were already given to the committee by the whistleblowers and other VA employees, Bost added.
Among the eight categories of documents Bost is demanding by Wednesday are all written and electronic communications since 2021 related to any allegations of improper interpersonal relationships within the resolution management office, all documents since 2021 related to any investigations into sexual harassment at the office, and all emails between several VA human resources and equal employment opportunity officials since January 2023.
"Due to the inadequacy of the department's responses so far, please provide the following information no later than Wednesday, January 10, 2024, by 10:00 a.m.," Bost wrote. "If VA does not provide this information by then, I will recommend the committee issue a subpoena."
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